Dàshèng sìfǎ jīnglùn guǎngshì kāijué jì 大乘四法經論廣釋開決記
Notes Resolving the Extensive Explication of the Sūtra-Treatise of the Four Mahāyāna Dharmas anonymous Táng-period author
About the work
A short single-fascicle scholastic-doctrinal jì 記 (“notes”) text (T85 no. 2785, Dūnhuáng manuscript-derived) on the Dàshèng sìfǎ jīnglùn 大乘四法經論 (the sūtra-cum-treatise genre, in this case attaching to the Dàshèng sìfǎ jīng of KR6i0469 / KR6i0471). The guǎngshì kāijué 廣釋開決 — “extensive explication and resolution” — designates a jì-genre text that addresses doctrinal problems and ambiguities in the parent commentary tradition.
Abstract
The text opens with a doctrinal exposition of the four foundations of mindfulness (sì niànchù 四念處 — body, sensation, mind, dharma) framed by the Buddha’s parinirvāṇa-counsel that the disciples should henceforth take the Vinaya as their teacher (yǐ jiè wéi shī 以戒為師) and dwell in the foundations of mindfulness. The four contemplations — guān shēn bùjìng 觀身不淨 (contemplation of the body’s impurity), guān shòu shì kǔ 觀受是苦 (sensations as suffering), guān xīn wúcháng 觀心無常 (mind as impermanence), guān fǎ wúwǒ 觀法無我 (dharmas as no-self) — together remove the four basic erroneous views (sìdào 四倒). The work proceeds in scholastic-doctrinal kāijué mode, addressing apparent contradictions between this Hīnayāna-style four-foundations doctrine and the Mahāyāna sìfǎ doctrine of the parent sūtra.
The work has no surviving authorial attribution and no internal date. Like its parallel text KR6i0595 Dàshèng sìfǎ jīng shì chāo (T85 n2784), it is a Dūnhuáng-manuscript-derived item belonging to the late-Táng / Five-Dynasties Buddhist scholastic culture. Together with KR6i0594 and KR6i0595, it forms a small but coherent commentary cluster on the Dàshèng sìfǎ jīng that survived only through the Dunhuang Cave 17 cache and was recovered into the Taishō by twentieth-century editorial work.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.
Other points of interest
The cluster of three texts — KR6i0594, KR6i0595, and the present KR6i0596 — exemplifies the value of the Dūnhuáng manuscript corpus for the recovery of regional Tang-and-Five-Dynasties Buddhist textual cultures that left no trace in the standard transmitted canon. The three works together reveal a scholastic commentary tradition centred on a relatively minor Mahāyāna scripture, with multi-layered exegetical apparatus (sūtra → commentary → subcommentary → kāijué jì) of a kind that is otherwise documented only for the major Mahāyāna scriptures of the central canon. The Dunhuang preservation thus demonstrates the breadth of late-Táng Chinese Buddhist scholarship far beyond what the canonical record alone would suggest.